Stalker's Day Off
by Chash
Summary: Shawn's happy with the status quo. Honest. (slash, ShawnCorey)


Title: Stalker's Day Off

Author: Chash

Fandom: Boy Meets World

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Summary: Shawn's happy with the status quo. Honest.

Notes: For the CLM challenge with Fiona Apple's "The Way Things Are." Honestly, the song did inspire me, but I'm not sure it shows through. So you'll have to take my word for it, I suppose. The title of the fic comes from a Robbie Williams song, because it's awesome. Apologies for the absolutely crap scene changes, but I honestly couldn't get to insert multi-line breaks. Anyone know why this is/how I can change it? It wouldn't even allow dashes.

Shawn doesn't trust relationships. He knows divorce rates like the back of his hand, can list numbers of orphans, children with one parent, people with abusive lovers—every bad statistic he can think of about people with significant others, he looks up and hoards, because it's one more reason he's not going to get into a long term relationship.

Of course, he can't tell Topanga this, because he's in love with her boyfriend. He thinks this is probably a reason he shouldn't say that Cory is a long-term relationship, but he likes seeing her squirm. It's not like he doesn't like Topanga, but he feels like she's taking Cory from him, and worst of all, she feels justified, as if because of those times they had in the sandbox, he's hers or something.

Shawn honestly likes Topanga. Just sometimes, he wants to rip out someone's hair, and it's a hard call if he'd rather rip hers or his.

La la la scene change!

Shawn is surprisingly happy, and it scares the fuck out of him. He knows enough statistics about himself and the world that he knows he shouldn't be happy, because his home life is crap, his ancestry is questionable, and he's a teenager, which means he's supposed to be depressed all the time. He may have all the sex he wants (only with the wrong people), but the whole crazy father gone mother hopeless love thing should probably bring him down.

With Cory, it's hard to even remember it's hopeless, sometimes, because he and Cory are always together, and even if there's Topanga now, Shawn finds it hard to care.brbrExcept, sometimes, Cory and Topanga kiss, and Shawn just lips his lips and thinks maybe he can't ever really be happy.

He never expected to be anyway. Hell, he's already beating the odds.

La la la scene change!

Shawn doesn't want the future. Shawn hates the future. The future is going to bring Cory and Topanga getting married and having lots of children and giving him these awful pitying looks and trying to set him up with girls they know who will never be what he wants. And he thinks Topanga knows this, knows why he doesn't want any of them, and he thinks, sometimes, that he hates her. Of course, he doesn't hate her, but he'd like to, because everything would be so much easier if he hated Topanga.

If he hated Topanga, he could seduce Cory, and it would be easy, because he knows Cory better than anyone (even better than Topanga), and he knows exactly how he would do it. But he likes Topanga, so he won't.

Shawn hates the future, because the future is becoming the present more and more. They're already married, and he's already alone.

But that's nothing new.

La la la scene change!

Shawn wouldn't know what to do in a relationship with Cory anyway, he tells himself as Cory kisses him. He tries convince himself they shouldn't enter a relationship between kissing him back, wondering why Cory is kissing him, and telling himself he's going to shove Cory away in just one second.

Instead, he finds himself with his arms around Cory's neck, thinking he'll stop this as soon as they pause for air, but it isn't so much a pause for air as a pause for Cory to pull Shawn's shirt off and throw it onto Topanga, who's just walked in.

Shawn breathlessly wonders how often girls walk in on their boyfriends in a heated gay make-out session. He'll look into it.

La la la scene change!

"How long has this been going on?" asks Topanga. Her voice is rational, like it always is, and her arms are folded over her chest. She looks pretty, but then, she always looks pretty. Well, once she got herself sorted out. But she always had some appeal. At least for Cory, and that's all that's ever mattered.

"About five minutes," says Shawn, at the same time Cory says, "Forever."

"Well, you guys answered two different questions, but both were relevant," says Topanga. "I'm not really surprised," she says, after a pause. Of course she isn't. Nothing surprises Topanga. She's infuriating like that. "I mean, it's pretty obvious."

"Topanga…" says Cory. "Please don't be mad."

"I'm not mad," she says, in that voice she uses when she's pretending she's not mad. Shawn winces, even though he didn't even start it. He chalks up another for the divorce rate, even though Cory and Topanga haven't gotten divorced yet. From the way Cory and Topanga are looking at each other, making up is not in the future.

Cory is also stroking his hand. Shawn could act like a stupid teenaged girl and squeal and make a big deal of it, but he's always been cooler than that.

"I didn't mean to cheat on you," says Cory slowly, "but I just didn't think. And by the time I realized I was doing it, I was in over my head. I never should have left you. I'm sorry."

It dawns on Shawn slowly that Cory is talking to him.

"What?" asks Shawn. He is aware of just how dazed he sounds. Of course, he just kissed Cory. The fact that he isn't doing a lame dance is amazing.

"Can we try that kissing thing again?" asks Cory, and doesn't wait for an answer. Shawn finds it surprisingly easy to kiss Cory, even easier than kissing all those girls he's spent his whole life kissing—perhaps because he doesn't have to kiss one person while thinking about another. And as soon as he tells himself this will change everything and make it suck because it's a relationship and those don't work, he realizes it won't change anything, because it's him and Cory, and even Cory's wife saw it coming.

He notices Cory is still wearing a shirt and corrects it. As he tosses the shirt away, he glances at Topanga and sees she's gone.

He always knew he liked that girl.


End file.
